


Perhaps this time

by AgapantoBlu, CrocInCrocs



Series: Another chance [1]
Category: DCU (Comics), The Authority, WildStorm
Genre: All my love to the people in the group-chat, Fix-It, For that one, Getting Back Together, M/M, Post-Break Up, That One Alternative Reality, There's no such a thing as a reality where these two don't end up together, Where Apollo's and Midnighter's Alter Egos Broke Up, listen, so here it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 05:32:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17176835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu, https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrocInCrocs/pseuds/CrocInCrocs
Summary: In one alternative reality, Daylighter and Pluto broke up. After the meeting with Midnighter and Apollo, they reconsider a few things.





	Perhaps this time

**Author's Note:**

> And this has awesome art too!

 

It felt, at times, like being slapped in the face very hard with cum dirty underwear. Which was a very specific feeling, maybe, but Daylighter had jerked awake at night enough times to know it like the back of his hand. Also, those Alternative Reality version of them were probably fucking right now. Fuckers. Who gave them the right? Midnighter looked like a fucking emo-goth undertaker with that all-black assemble, too.

The problem was that Daylighter couldn't stop thinking about them. About the flinch in his alter-ego when he'd told them of his break-up; about the instinctive way in which Apollo leaned forward, reaching out for his lover immediately. The computer in his brain had pulled data after data from those micro actions, and the final analysis had sent a pang of familiar melancholy to his chest. It spoke about long years of closeness, familiarity and support; but also of tensions, fights, differences hit face-first like granite walls, again and again.

 _How long had they been together?_ , he kept wondering. How did they make it past the insecurities and the fears and the hurt? What did they do that Daylighter and Pluto forgo?

The Carrier was, once again, indifferent to Daylighter's insomnia as he stared out of the windows to the red infinity.

"I'd offer a penny for your thoughts, but you've made abundantly clear that they're worth much more than that."

Daylighter didn't jerk, though he had, more than once, responded to Pluto's sudden entrances with cusses and, at times, a throwing knife. He thought of Midnighter leaning into Apollo's touch and kept his mouth shut instead.

Pluto went to the length of standing to Daylighter's side. He didn't look at him directly, it had been a long time since he'd comfortably done so, and he kept his arms crossed in front of his chest but he remained in arm's reach.

"I'm bad at communicating, yeah, you've said it already," but what Daylighter wanted to say was, _Midnighter didn't look the best at it either._

"Right."

Pluto remained where he was. Daylighter vibrated with the need to yell, ask, demand, _why them?, why not us?, we're just the same, barely a universe to the side._

He felt like crying. He cried often. The other him, Midnighter, didn't look like he cried as much. Maybe that was why? But Pluto used to hold him in his arms when he broke down, sobbing, and never seemed to mind that he was that emotional. Though, Daylighter was aware to be an ugly crier. 

"You're overthinking this," Pluto said. _Again_ , he was nice enough to keep for himself.

"What's _this_?!" Daylighter asked. "Our clones from another reality being the fucking patrons for Pride parade?!"

"Since when do you care about that?" Pluto scoffed. "Being out was never your biggest concern."

 _You were._ "That's not what I meant and you know it!"

"No, I don't!" Pluto realized he'd yelled only when he heard the echo of his voice return to him. It was enough to quell his anger, because this was the way all his past talks with Daylighter had gone. All the fights leading to the break-up. He had promised himself this time would be different, but he was terrible at keeping his word.

Daylighter was looking at him with _that_ expression. The one he'd worn after Pluto had told him they were over; the one that said he'd stopped fighting because the computer in his brain had decided they'd lose in any possible scenario. Pluto fucking despised that expression.

"Whatever," Daylighter was saying, and Pluto saw him turning and thought of Apollo's face.

He had said he was leaving, told himself not to, but he'd spied in on Daylighter telling their other selves of their unhappy ending. He wasn't sure what he'd been hoping for. Maybe a promise to fight harder for them, maybe some encouragement. Anything, probably. Surely, he hadn't expected how surprised, how confused, Apollo had appeared at the notion that some version of him could have broken up with some version of Midnighter. He seemed to be struggling even to conceive the idea.

Pluto found his hand full of white leather and his head empty of logic thoughts.

Daylighter stopped in his track. His reflection in the Carrier's window was wide-eyed and already tearing up. God, how Pluto loved it, to brush the tears from Daylighter's face, to know he was the only one the man trusted to take care of him in the harshest times.

"They made it," he said, because he didn't know what else to say and because they were both thinking it and pretending not to was counter-productive. Probably.

He felt Daylighter shrug under his cape. "I didn't ask them how they did it."

Even if he did, it probably wouldn't be the same for them. There were some differences between them and their alter-egos, after all.

Pluto thought of how detached he'd felt saying _enough_. He truly despised the word, ever since.

"Maybe they didn't do anything much," he let slip.  _Maybe they tried one more time,_ though he doubted it was that easy.

"They're jumping through realities trying to go back to their own," Daylighter pointed out. "They probably did something _much,_ and fucked it up royally."

That was a valid point.

"They are still a couple, though," Pluto tried with as soft a voice as he could. "Whatever they fucked up, _them_ wasn't part of it."

"Give them time."

"I don't want to give them time, I want to give us some!"

The Carrier chose that moment to make the underlying buzzing sound of some kind of machinery stop. The silence froze the air around the revelation.

Daylighter shifted from foot to foot, and Pluto recognized the telling for the uncertainty of a personal matter. "I thought you were _done_. That _we_ weren't worth extenuating ourselves over any longer."

Pluto grimaced at his own words. "I thought it was true."

"And now?"

_Now we know that somewhere, somehow, we made it._ "I don't know. And you?"

Daylighter turned. It was nice to look at his face again, but Pluto's fingers refused to let go of their hold on the leather. Daylighter looked like an half-made burrito not overly worried about his own state. He looked much more preoccupied with staring at Pluto. 

"I-" His voice broke. Pluto could tell what he desperately wanted to say but would be a lie. And they did enough of that, to both each others and themselves. "I'm not sure."

For some reason, those words softened the grip of vicious vines around Pluto's heart. "That's fair."

Daylighter's shoulders dropped a bit. "It'd be dumb to think that they are reason enough to just... assume we can do it too."

"Reckless," Pluto confirmed.

"Illogic."

"Idiotic."

"What are we, fucking Looney Toons?!"

Pluto snickered. "I think you're better-looking than a Looney Toon."

"Oh well, thank you."

Pluto waited. Daylighter wasn't good at talking and they'd done quite some of that, right now. He could concede this time, and let him have some minutes to go over whatever thought his brain was fuzzing about.

In the end, Daylighter looked at the hand on his cape still. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he lifted his hand to touch it. Pluto let him arrange their fingers in a feathery tangle.

Words couldn't have explained it just as well.

_One more try, it is_ , Pluto thought, and they stood there, watching their own reflections holding hands in silence.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> On Tumblr,@[agapantoblu ](https://agapantoblu.tumblr.com/)and @[carry-on-my-wayward-artblog](http://carry-on-my-wayward-artblog.tumblr.com/)


End file.
